Look! Something cute!

For years, ever since the Zooman brought some to Zoo Day at preschool when the girls were little, I have wanted a hedgehog. The closest we came was hedgehog-sitting, a few years ago.

Since moving into the house and getting FeeBee the Wonder Dog, the kids have been begging for another pet. The other morning Lily tried to talk me into pet rabbits and then pet penguins. When I nixed both those ideas, she went straight to the one she knew she could win with – a hedgehog.

We badgered B to the point that he finally caved, provided he never has to touch it, feed it, walk it, clean it or acknowledge its existence.

After much research, off we went.

Turns out there is this great little pet store near our old house that I had never heard of. It’s called Zookeeper, and it’s tucked away in a shopping center that mostly houses furniture stores. The online reviews of the place were great – everyone raved about the animals and the staff and and and. They have a sloth in residence – A SLOTH!

So I loaded up the kids and off we went. Ella knew what we were up to, but I didn’t tell the little three until we got to the store. I almost changed my mind about the whole adventure when we saw the four-foot-long blue and black lizards in the front window. They gave me the creeps, but the kids were jumping up down, yelling “OhmygodlizardsIwantone!”

The store was tiny and crowded and filled with cages of snakes and lizards and spiders – all things that make my skin crawl. I nearly ran from the store, willing to abandon my children to their own fates, when I saw the huge aquarium filled with giant black scorpions.

I just can’t. Who buys these things? They’re terrifying.

My fear was that we’d get all the way up to the store and be all kinds of excited, only for them not to have any. (Yes, I know there’s such a thing as calling ahead, but I have this weird phone phobia.) Fortunately, they had 8 baby hedgehogs, all curled up asleep. Ella picked out her favorite, and the staff member brought him out to meet us.

He didn’t go all spiky, and he snuggled right down in Ella’s arms. She hugged him and squeezed him and we named him wembley j hedgehog.

The staff member hooked us up with a barely used cage that someone had returned to the store and all the hedgehog gear we needed, including a can of mealworms (shudder). Really, if you ever want to go to a nice little pet store, go to Zookeeper.

We brought wembley home to be a “surprise” for B, who did actually know what we were up to. He took one look at wembley and asked, “What kind of pet sleeps all day and goes all spiky when you try hold him.” The girls just said, “Daayyyaaad, he’s so CUTE.” B has since admitted that wembley is pretty darn cute.

Poor wembley, though, is in danger of being loved to death. The girls want to have him out of his box all day, even though he prefers sleeping.

Sleepy Sunday morning hedgehog

Last night the big girls were in heaven. Each got to sit with wembley asleep  in her lap for at least an hour. And ZOMG the cuteness was almost too much to deal with, especially when he rolled into a little ball.

He eventually woke up and thrilled the kids by ambling around, climbing on them, and eating hedgehog chow. 

We’ve already had him out of the cage this morning. I think the girls are determined to turn him into a lap pet. Which is apparently possible. The petstore guy said that the more you handle them while they are babies, the less likely they are to be all pokey and spikey when they’re big.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I want to go snuggle wembley.

I have no one to blame but myself

One of my resolutions this year was to get out of the house and actually DO the things I talk about doing. That’s how I ended up at the UT astronomy building with five kids and thousands of strangers. It’s how I got talked into taking everyone to the waterpark from hell and to fireworks on the 4th. I’m tired of saying, “I can’t do that because I’d have to take all four kids.” If I wait for a time when I don’t have to take all four kids, I’ll never go anywhere. Besides, they need to learn how to behave in public.

In that spirit, I decided to take every one to IKEA yesterday. I figured it would make a good field trip. While I rallied the troops, B put together a shopping list of bookcases and more bookcases and more bookcases (seriously, we got 5), an entertainment center, a coffee table and other storage stuff. I added a few random items of my own.

On the drive to IKEA, I vowed to just get into the zen of the experience and take things slowly and not freak out when the kids ran off in four different directions or jumped on the furniture. And it all went beautifully. Each kid got to pick out a $.50 stuffed animal, I got some office supplies and a new garbage can. Campbell got a rug for his room that has roads and towns all over it. We stopped at the café and had a nice lunch.

Campbell absolutely, positively did NOT want his picture taken.

The closer we got to the end of the store, the crazier things got, though. Ella and Lily both begged and pleaded to get shoots of bamboo and vases. I finally gave in, which I still regret. Ella’s sole focus for the rest of the trip was making sure nothing happened to that damn piece of bamboo. I threatened to throw it in the trash at one point because she refused to push the shopping cart – “But I don’t have any safe place to put my bamboo!”

I got so many boxes of bookshelves and coffee tables that it took two flat bed carts to load everything. We were quite the sight going through the warehouse, a little train of catastrophe waiting to happen. As I was checking product ID numbers and wrestling boxes on to carts, the kids discovered that they could run underneath and behind all the shelving and I couldn’t get to them. They also realized they could climb on all the boxes. I kept hissing vague threats about what I would do if they didn’tstopitrightnowandgetbackoverhere.

That’s all our stuff.

Ella eventually kept the little kids entertained by building them a fort out of the boxes on one of the carts. Campbell and Elizabeth spent the rest of the expedition hiding in the fort and giggling wildly.

The store’s safety officer was probably having a fit.

We finally lugged everything to checkout to discover long, long lines. People around us cringed when they saw how much stuff I had. One woman managed to sneak in line in front of me. I was about to protest, but she was buying two picture frames, and I would have let her go before me anyway.

The poor cashier looked to be about 18, and when he saw my carts, he muttered, “Oh dear God” under his breath. We were the family that everyone else in the store HATES. First, the cashier discovered that instead of boxes 1, 2, and 3 for the TV stand, I had grabbed boxes 2, 3, and 3. So he had to call a staff member to come get the extra box number 3 and swap it out for box number 1. Then he pulled out the new garbage can I had picked up, and we discovered that somewhere in the store, I had lost the lid. It was probably when Lily crashed into a shelf and everything fell out of the cart and wiped out an entire display.

The people behind us started sharpening pitchforks.

We finally got everything sorted and paid for, or so I thought. That’s when Ella realized that Elizabeth was clutching her $.50 stuffed snake and I hadn’t paid for it. I think the cashier was on the verge of tears. He just wanted us to go away already. Since there was no way we were going to be able to leave the store without that damn snake, I pulled $.53 out of my wallet and handed it to the cashier.

After a nice staff member named Joe returned with our missing box number 1, I headed for the exit, unsure of just how, exactly, I was going to manage to get everything in the car. Fortunately, another nice young staff member saw the look of desperation in my eyes and took over. If he hadn’t, I might have ended up on the sidewalk surrounded by kids and boxes, crying.

Waiting for Joe and our last box.

To fit everything, I had to fold down the third row of the Suburban along with one seat of the second row. We managed to get all the boxes loaded and then wedged our other purchases in where ever we could find a spot. Campbell, Elizabeth and Lily ended up crammed together into two seats in the second row, which meant the whole trip home was a chorus of “He’s touching me!” “She’s leaning on me!” “Tell her to get her head off me!” To make things even better, we hit MoPac at 5:00 rush hour in the rain.

I spent the trip clutching the steering wheel, praying we wouldn’t get stopped by a cop, and yelling, “Stop touching your sister!” at whoever was whining the most in the back seat.

But we made it home safely, Ella’s bamboo shoot included, and we’ll be spending the rest of the week building bookcases. B put the first one together last night. Elizabeth was his “helper,” and  after he gave her a list of tools he would need for the project, she thought for a second and added, “And you need to call someone else.” I nearly fell over laughing. He wasn’t as amused.

The kicker is that I need to return two items and exchange another, which means I have to go back to IKEA, probably with all four kids in tow.

Dogplay

The same weekend we got FeeBee, my mother-in-law adopted a Chihuahua puppy named Mia. Mia is tiny, and Lily absolutely adores her.

Yesterday Mia came for a visit. The dogs had a great time playing together even though FeeBee outweighs Mia by about 70 pounds. The kids thought it was the funniest thing ever.

Later in the day, B and I had this conversation.

B: I think FeeBee would love to have a little buddy to play with.
Me: Ummmm
B: And Lily would love to have a little dog.
Me: No
B: She'd have outfits and hats for the dog, and fancy leashes.
Me: No
B: Come on, it would be fun to have another dog.
Me: No
B: If I'm willing to consider another dog, you should be, too.
Me: No

We're not getting another dog.

:)

: )

To Hell and Back

A week ago, one of my good friends and former neighbors sent out a group e-mail announcing that they were spending two days at Schlitterbahn, did anyone want to join them. In a moment of sleep-deprived insanity, I sent the e-mail to B and asked if he thought I should take the kids. I figured he’d say “Are you kidding me? That place is expensive! We need blinds in the windows before we need to go there.” Instead, his reply was, “Sounds good. Have fun.”

He basically threw me under the bus.

Then I made the mistake of telling the kids about it. And once you tell kids about a trip to Schlitterbahn, there is no turning back. They spent the week singing the song from the commercial, and the big girls regaled Campbell with stories of HOWAWESOMEITISTOGOTHERE!

I decided to approach the trip calmly: I made plans for meeting our friends and parking, packed a cooler with food, and organized my pool bag. And it worked, at first. We rode rides, we met up with our friends right on schedule, we stayed together as a group, the little kids didn’t freak out. It was all mostly good. It was also hot and crowded. And we walked more than we rode. Did I mention it was hot and crowded? I get panicky in crowds and heat, especially when trying too keep my eye on four kids and five inner tubes, and I may have had some not very good moments, but I’m not saying.

As we went along, I mentally checked off items on my Schlitterbahn Bingo card:

• Women with leathery skin and stretched out tattoos – check
• Shirtless men with beer guts sitting in tubes scratching themselves – check
• Walking proof that inbreeding is a bad thing – check
• A toddler in the kid pool wearing a regular diaper seven times its normal size – check
• Band aids in the pool – check
• Teenage boys in packs acting like jackasses – check
• Shrieking teen age girls who should be told that wearing a fringed bikini top is never a good idea – check
• Giant fake boobs on display – check
• T-shirts with horribly offensive drawings and slogans on them – check

But we survived, and the kids had a lot of fun. We all got Slushees and giant pretzels and finished the day absolutely waterlogged. I was so grateful that my neighbor and her family were there with us. They helped me keep track of everyone. Because of them, the big girls were able to go off and ride the big, fancy rides while I hung in the little kid pools with Campbell and Elizabeth. Campbell has decided he wants to live at Schlitterbahn. Shudder.

Now my kids can never ever say, “You never take us anywhere!” ever again. On the other hand, I think I’m going to get asked “When can we go back?” every half hour between now and the end of the summer.

No pictures. I deliberately took myself offline for the day and left my phone in the car. It was nice to be disconnected.

False Advertising

People out here in Dripping seem to have odd ideas about names for their business establishments.

A few weeks after we moved out here, B mentioned that he was looking for a good, local place to get his hair cut. I told him I’d seen a place in downtown called The Barbershop, complete with the striped pole outside. I left for a work meeting and forgot all about it, until a text from B arrived: “The Barbershop you told me about is a bar. I walked in there at 11:00 am asking for a haircut.” I may have snort laughed in the middle of the meeting.

For the past few months, I’ve been driving this place called “Up in Smoke” and figured it was a barbecue joint. One day guys were out back making their own charcoal. So when B asked for barbecue for dinner, I thought it would a perfect place to try. When we pulled in, there were lots of cars in the parking lot, which I figured was a good sign. I left Ella in the car and waltzed into the place to find a dark, smoky honkytonk filled with drunk people. I asked a woman sitting at the bar if there was barbecue there, and she looked at me like I was an alien. I walked out quickly before there were problems, grateful that I hadn’t waltzed into a bar with my 11 year old.

On the way home, we stopped at a second place that had a sign outside that said “Real, Old-Time Barbecue,” and I made Ella get out of the car with me. Turns out it was a liquor store and there was a wine tasting going on. Everyone stared as the guy at the counter directed me to their barbecue section – a cooler of commercially packaged sausage and brisket. We left quickly, and I felt like the mother of the year taking my daughter to her first liquor store.

We did finally find a real barbecue joint in Dripping, but it took a few U-turns and driving slowly past places to figure out if they were really what they said they were. When we finally stopped, we knew we were in the right place based on the smell of barbecue in the parking lot. I was very relieved to walk in to a clean, well-lighted, family-run establishment. And the food was delicious.

There’s a new place opening up near us called “Pieous.” With the luck I’ve been having, it will probably be a bible store.

Not my imagination

So I haven’t been feeling well the past few weeks, and it’s been getting worse. It’s not that I feel sick; instead, I just feel off. And tired. Oh so tired. Not in an “I have four kids and don’t get enough sleep” way but in an “I don’t think I can actually walk across the room” way. I feel like my body is filled with cement and that I’m breathing at altitude. I have asthma, and this is not asthma related. I just can’t get enough air in. To add to the fun, my hands tremble so badly that I have trouble knitting and typing, and I keep losing my balance and tipping over. Then there’s the whole blood pressure bottoming out stuff. And getting words mixed up; just a few minutes ago I told Ella to help get Elizabeth some groceries. I meant grapes, not groceries.

Basically, I’ve been a mess.

I haven’t said anything about to anyone, not really even B, because it’s just such a vague list of symptoms. There’s no one big thing I can point to. And because, oh my dog I do not need anything else to deal with right now. Between my migraines and depression, and Ella’s knee, and B’s ongoing stuff, I just don’t have the bandwidth for more. I ignored the symptoms and powered through.

And then it got worse. I woke up Monday feeling awful. I couldn’t walk up the stairs without gasping, let alone run. FeeBee is very upset with me. Yesterday I finally called the doctor and made an appointment for this morning.

I felt kind of silly going in and listing the symptoms for the nurse. I told her I felt a bit like a Victorian woman who just needs smelling salts and a fainting couch. She laughed and then sat down to take my blood pressure, which was low. Then she looked at me hard said, “Sweeetie – you look peaky. I don’t know how else to describe it. Peaky.”

I wanted to burst into tears and hug her. The relief that someone saw what I was feeling in some small way was overwhelming.

My doctor has ordered a full complement of blood work, which I have to do tomorrow morning after not eating for 12 hours. He’s guessing that my thyroid’s out of whack, which would make sense given that my mom has had thyroid problems, and her sister had thyroid cancer, and my cousin had major problems. It seems to run in the family. He also referred me to a cardiologist for a heart scan, just to be safe. I’m fine with being safe.

In a strange way I feel better knowing that there really might be something wrong. This isn’t my imagination or my being weak and unable to power through. So I’ll cut myself some slack, rest as much as I can, wait for lab results, and hope for conclusive results.

Running again

I’m running again, have been for weeks now. But I didn’t want to say anything and jinx myself. The difference now is that I’m not keep track in any shape or form of how far or how long or how often I run. I have set absolutely no goals in terms distances or times, and I haven’t registered for any races. I even pulled my name out of the lottery for the NYC marathon. The thought that I had a chance of even getting an entry was making me panic.

It’s all because of FeeBee. When I get up in the morning, she expects me to take her out for a walk. And those walks slowly morphed into runs. Now when FeeBee sees me get my running shoes on, she does backflips around the house and howls. I have to get her out the door to keep her from waking up the entire house.

FeeBee is the best coach I’ve ever had. She does not care that I didn’t get enough sleep or that it’s dreadfully hot and humid. If I don’t put her on the leash and take her for at least three miles, she follows me around all day, heaving big doggy sighs.

I’ve even made it down to the Trail the past two Friday mornings to meet up with running friends. I have no hope of being able to keep up with them, but it’s nice to see other people. Plus, Friday runs now end with a dip in Barton Springs, which is a lovely way to start the day.

For now, my only goal is to keep running, or even walking, through the summer. That way when things cool off in October, I won’t be starting from scratch. I think I can handle that, with FeeBee’s help.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or you don’t have at least one astronomy-obsessed kid, you knew that yesterday Venus went between us and the sun. It won’t happen again for another 105 years. (Ella is sitting next to me making sure I get the facts right.)

We failed in our quest to have solar film delivered to the house in time to see the transit, which Ella has reminded me of about every 5 minutes since she found out that overnight shipping isn’t always overnight.

Anyway. There was an article in the paper about how the UT Astronomy Outreach group was sponsoring a transit viewing on the roof of one of the buildings on campus. Thinking it would be a great field trip, and remembering my resolution to actually get out and do things, I loaded my four into the car. Then the new neighbor, who isn’t actually a neighbor but is just housesitting and boy are we going to miss them when they leave, said that her oldest son had really wanted to go, but she just couldn’t get herself together, so she promised them barbecue for dinner. So I did what any sane, reasonable mom of four would do, I offered to take him with us. Because really, once you are dragging four kids, one of whom is still on crutches, on an insane adventure, what’s one more? For the record, he was the best behaved member of our group.

We made it in to UT with time to spare and hoped to find street parking near the building. There wasn’t any, so we had to park in a garage a few blocks away and then hike uphill. Poor Ella was struggling on her crutches and had to rest every few minutes.

I knew we were in trouble when we walked into the building and found ourselves at the back of the line just to get on an elevator to the top floor. And then it got worse. We got off the elevator into a packed hallway, where the lined doubled back on itself. Ours was the last group that was allowed to stay in the hall, everyone after that got herded into the stairwell, where the line went down multiple floors. If we had been five minutes later, we would have been in real trouble.

Fortunately, the kids, even the little ones, were really good, much better than I expected. I can’t say the same for some others in the hall. It was crowded and hot and humid, but there were interesting posters on the walls, and we saw some friends.

At one point, when the line doubled back next to a window, there was a volunteer with specially coated glass letting people look at the sun. I was amazed that we could see Venus, no magnification required. The distances and sizes just baffle me.

After more than an hour, we made it on to the roof, where we stood in more lines. The astronomy group did a good job, though. They had lots of volunteers and telescopes, plus binoculars with special filters, eclipse glasses, and a pinhole viewer. The kids kept busy and were able to see the transit several times.

Despite the lines and the heat and the crowds and the broken payment machine at the parking garage that wouldn’t let anyone out, it was worth the trip. Ella, Lily and the boy next door had a good time. Campbell and Elizabeth got P. Terry’s for dinner, so they considered it a successful trip.

And I get “Mother of the Year” award for making it all happen.

I can’t keep up

I am so far behind on so many things that I’m kind of paralyzed. I don’t know what monumental task I should attempt first.

Before we moved, back when we were living in a tiny house, I thought keeping a big house clean would be easy. I told everyone that it would be so much better when I had a place for everything and everything in its place and I wasn’t trying to cram six people and their belongings into too small of a space.

Oh how naïve I was.

Yes, we do have places for everything. But I can’t get the kids to put things in those places. We have tons of storage, but we moved in so quickly that everything just got thrown in closets with little to no organization. I’m still rearranging things. And the kids have their own rooms in which to keep their own stuff, but their stuff still wanders the house.

I feel like I spend my days constantly picking up the stuff they drop.

Then there’s the actual cleaning. Just vacuuming the downstairs takes forever, and I have to do it almost daily thanks to a black dog and four messy kids. Keeping four bathrooms clean has defeated me. A new neighbor came over today for an impromptu playdate, and it occurred to me that I didn’t have a single bathroom that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to have her use.

My dining room is filled with folded laundry. B, half joking, asked if I wanted him to turn the whole room into laundry and craft space. I’m still considering it. The laundry on the dining room table is just the tip of the iceberg. The laundry room itself is piled with clean laundry, most of it not in baskets. My kids have gotten used to digging through mountains of clothes to get dressed.

This Sunday I mowed the lawn. One of my friends asked why I wanted to mow the lawn considering everything else I need to get done. My response: “It’s the only chore I do that stays done for more than five minutes.”  Another friend suggested hiring a cleaning lady. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. Because she’d clean, the house would be spotless, and then one of the kids would spill something on the floor and I’d lose my mind.

I think unfolded laundry and a little dirt is better than a nervous breakdown. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.